Once a year and only for about eight hours, the Piedmont Mopar Club and Smith Stokes Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge invade the eighth-mile Farmington Dragway near Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for a day of Pentastar madness. There are certainly many good regional shows held throughout the country each year, but few are in their twenty-first year.

The event features the normal car show, vendor areas, and swap meet, with a Mopar-only drag racing program thrown in for good measure. A large part of its success is due to the active and professional involvement of the Piedmont Mopar Club out of Greensboro, whose members handle all the show details. many cars come not just from the surrounding counties, but also the surrounding states-South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia-to enjoy a day in the North Carolina sun. The club's Ron Osborne, who initiated the event back in 1985, gets special credit for helping it run smoothly.

This year there were 174 show cars in attendance, lined up in grassy rows in what is normally a pit and spectator parking area. They ran the gamut of all things Mopar, from stock prewar trucks to the latest SRT iron. Muscle, of course, was in abundance, as this is NASCAR's heartland-wing cars, E-Bodies, old race cars, and more. A special area even had a section for AMCs, whose enthusiasts also came out to support the breed. Incidentally, none of the show judges come from the local club in the interest of fairness, and none of the club members enter the judged show.

Here are just a few pages on what went on during those eight hours of May 13, 2006.

For information on the '07 show, which will again be on the Saturday before Mother's Day, e-mail Ronomopars@bellsouth.net. for those of you traveling, the Smith Stokes dealership in Reidsville, North Carolina, (about 45 minutes east of the track) hosts a nice Mopar car show at their facility the Friday evening before the event, so you can do that, stay at a nearby hotel, and then roll into the show bright and early the next morning.